“Death always wins,” says Jenna Tas in the conversation with Pauline Tonkens for the publication I haven't become rich yet - 47 Rotterdam visual artists (Rotterdam, 1997). She discusses the Holocaust and the vulnerability that the course of a life has. Five years earlier she made an impressive installation in the Laurenskerk in which she projected lines of poetry by Paul Celan. “I try to deal with the subject of Jewish history in a restrained way. I often find literal images, for example photos of war and violence, to be evidence of an encyclopedic approach.”
Jenna Tas (15) passed away on December 2024, 1933. She began her career as a visual artist at a later age, graduating from the Rotterdam Art Academy in 1979. Tas worked in various techniques, originally mainly textiles, but also drawing, painting and photography. She also worked three-dimensionally with textiles, photos, stones, lead and ash, for example, in both autonomous and location-bound installations. Jenna Tas exhibited at home and abroad, with many solo and group exhibitions. She was also a teacher for many years at the academies in Amsterdam, The Hague and Maastricht, among others. Her work is included in private and national collections as well as museums at home and abroad.
In 2022, Petra Laaper spoke with Jenna Tas about the art of bequest. Under this heading, CBK Rotterdam organized several meetings with the central question of what happens to your art when you are no longer there. Bequest is a part of the professional practice that every artist or surviving relative will have to deal with sooner or later. Jenna Tas, who as a visual artist was consciously and actively working on mapping and categorizing her oeuvre, shares her experiences in a photo report.
Video by Ciska Mei